The region of Transcarpathia has seen hardly any Russian attacks over the past three years. “We don’t have the same experience of war,” a resident said.

By Constant Méheut and Daria Mitiuk

Photographs by Brendan Hoffman

Constant Méheut, Daria Mitiuk and Brendan Hoffman spent two days in Ukraine’s westernmost Transcarpathia region to report this article.

• June 11, 2025

It was well past midnight in Mukachevo, a city of cobblestone streets tucked into Ukraine’s western tip, and a group of students lingered by the river, debating what to grab from a nearby 24/7 supermarket. A van pulled up, and out spilled a rowdier crowd of young men — loud, tipsy and visibly thirsty for more.

It looked like a classic Sunday night, before the workweek begins. But in wartime Ukraine — where curfews and Russian air assaults have turned the nights into something between tense silence and sudden explosions — it was an exceptional scene.

“Here, we do not hear the sound of explosions, we do not have rockets, we do not have frequent air alarms,” said Oleksandr Pop, 20, one of the students. “We don’t have the same experience of war.”

Ukraine’s capital region of Kyiv has reeled from several recent nights of record-breaking Russian drone attacks, with air raid alerts wailing for nearly 130 hours over the past month. By comparison, Mukachevo and the surrounding region of Transcarpathia have endured only one-tenth as much time under alert.

In more than three years of war, only a few drones and missiles have struck the remote, mountainous region of Transcarpathia. It is the only Ukrainian region without a nighttime curfew, making it a rare pocket of relative calm.

Partly, it could be protected by geography. The region borders four NATO countries — Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia — raising the risk that any off-course Russian strike could spill into a broader war. There are also few military sites in this region, which is so far west that it is closer to Venice than to the eastern Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk, a hot spot of the fighting.

20 MILES

By The New York Times

The region’s relative safety has made it a magnet for civilians fleeing attacks in the east. More than 145,000 people have resettled in Transcarpathia, most of them in Mukachevo and the nearby city of Uzhhorod, which sits on the border with Slovakia.

For them, moving to Transcarpathia has meant adjusting to a jarring new reality. They fled places reduced to rubble, only to arrive in cities dotted with high-rises built for newcomers. From Transcarpathia, one can watch commercial planes streak across the skies of neighboring European countries, a long-forgotten sight in the rest of Ukraine, where the only aircraft visible are the rare, ominous silhouettes of fighter jets.

War usually reveals itself only indirectly — in the quiet procession of a soldier’s funeral, in memorials to the fallen that have sprung up on plazas or in conscription officers roaming the streets.

News from the front also filters back from Transcarpathia’s 128th Mountain Assault Brigade, one of Ukraine’s oldest units, which experienced heavy losses during the country’s 2023 counteroffensive. But the first thing every newcomer to the region notices is the calm.

“It was a bit of a shock,” Tetiana Bezsonova, who fled Pokrovsk a year ago, said about her arrival in Mukachevo. She paused and corrected herself: “It was not a shock, but a relief. That somewhere, people live calmly. Somewhere, people live normally.”

“For me, personally, it’s like an oasis in Ukraine,” Ms. Bezsonova, 30, said.

Transcarpathia stood apart from the rest of Ukraine long before the war began.

The region became part of Soviet Ukraine around the second half of the 20th century, after decades under Austro-Hungarian and then Czechoslovak rule. That history shaped a distinct identity — visible in pastel-colored facades and cobblestone streets that echo Vienna and Budapest. Absent are the hulking Soviet-era high-rises that loom over many Ukrainian cities. In Uzhhorod, Hungarian-language plaques still mark buildings, a reminder of the city’s layered past.

The first known attack on the region came more than two months after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, when a missile hit a railway facility. Since then, strikes have been so rare that locals struggle to recall the last one.

Only in Transcarpathia can revelers still dance in nightclubs into the early morning. That’s a scene now unthinkable in Kyiv, where the city’s famed electro clubs open early and shut by 11 p.m., an hour before curfew kicks in.

“Life goes on,” smiled Daria Podde, 19, a waitress at a nightclub in Mukachevo who also works part time as a bartender. On a recent evening, she leaned over the counter to show a video she had taken the month before at the nightclub. It showed revelers jumping to the beat, lights flashing. The time stamp on her phone read 5:40 a.m.

That sense of normalcy stunned Daria Markovuch, 33, when she arrived in Mukachevo in March 2022, after fleeing the besieged city of Mariupol, which is now under Russian occupation.

“You live through hell, and then you come to a city where it doesn’t exist, where people drink coffee, girls have lipstick and styled hair,” she recalled. “I just wanted to grab everyone and say: ‘Run away from here. Just run away. Because hell does exist and it’s not far from here.’”

Over time, Ms. Markovuch said she came to appreciate the calm of Transcarpathia. She now runs a local group that helps displaced people settle in Mukachevo, noting that new arrivals continue to show up every month.

The split-screen reality with the rest of Ukraine can ruffle feathers. The region also has a reputation as a gateway for draft dodgers trying to escape Ukraine by crossing into neighboring European countries, sometimes braving a risky swim across a river into Romania.

Dmytro Vorobiov, 45, a soldier who lost his right foot in combat last August, and is now recovering in a hospital in Uzhhorod, northwest of Mukachevo, said he had been annoyed when hearing a young local casually saying he was “tired of the war.”

“I’m like, ‘Are you insane? Maybe you need to move closer to the front?’” Mr. Vorobiov recalled. Still, like many soldiers convalescing in the region, he said part of the reason he fights is so that others can live in peace.

Sitting in a tavern-like cafe in Uzhhorod, oil lamps swaying overhead and the war feeling a world away, Andriy Lyubka, a well-known Ukrainian poet and resident, acknowledged “some kind of tension in the air,” as locals quietly wonder what others are doing for the war effort.

Like many other men of military age in Ukraine, Mr. Lyubka, 37, can be drafted into the army. But he said he had yet to receive a conscription notice.

“When you walk here with your daughter, for example, a lot of the people — actually women whose husbands are in the army — they look at you with some critical glance,” he said. “They have questions in their eyes.”

Mr. Lyubka’s answer is that he raises money to buy vehicles for the army. So far, he has bought more than 360 cars and delivered them with friends to the front — 58 trips in total. Each journey, he says, serves as a useful reminder that the peacefulness of Uzhhorod is “false, an illusion.”

“It’s very nice here, but it doesn’t mean everything will be OK,” he said. “The peace we feel here depends entirely on what’s happening at the eastern front.”

Constant Méheut reports on the war in Ukraine, including battlefield developments, attacks on civilian centers and how the war is affecting its people.

………..,.,.

A filthy troll: Laura from Brooklyn, writes :

Let’s hope this corner of Ukraine remains peaceful. The area has a large number of Hungarian speaking residents, who in the past have been recipients Ukrainian ultra nationalist hatred, as have Russia speaking Ukrainians in the East. It’s good that all manner of Ukrainians feel welcome in Transcarpathia and that it is a peaceful haven. Let’s fervently hope for the same for all Ukraine. A step would be to lay the groundwork for serious, long term diplomacy that takes into consideration the security of all European states, including Russia.

Gordon Kelley

Very good article showing the differences between a war zone and somewhere else. Great retreat for soldiers to get them selves back together and I understand with two tours in Vietnam up on the DMZ in the 2/94th Field Artillery, which was no picnic. Please people, convince our US government with letters, your vote, donations as I have done and continue to do, to support Ukraine as they just want their freedom as we wanted ours way back when. If Ukraine falls, Europe is next and then what would happen to all those beautiful places we all have or so want to visit on vacation? Please wake up USA to the danger of what Russia is trying to do which is take over Europe all the way down to Spain! So what would be left to visit? Let alone the repression that would happen to all the Europeans that would suffer.

MinnesotaJohn

Saint Paul, MN

No one should have any illusions. Zakarpattia province—the section of the country featured in this article—is part of Ukraine and Putin wants it. If this part of Ukraine is enjoying relative calm, this will be just a temporary state of affairs, particularly if Putin is allowed to make gains in the East.

Another squalid troll:

WSGNY

Assertions of Ukranian sovereignty are weakened by histories showing multiple changes of government over the years especially those imposed by treaties. It is ironic that the one country, Russia, that did vastly more than any other to liberate Europe from the NAZIs according to General Eisenhower. Ike, an honest man, refused to attend any D-Day commemoration ceremony suggesting that Marshall Zhukov be honored for winning the war in Europe. In August 1945, in uniform, he stood between Stalin and Zhukov atop Lenin’s Tomb to review a parade of Soviet youth and at a press conference said he saw nothing but rosy relationships between the U. S. and the USSR. Postwar, the USSR dominated only those countries that Churchill agree to give up as an incentive for the Red Army, alone, to bear the cost of capturing Berlin. Churchill and General Patton both supported “Operation Unthinkable,” a postwar plan to attack Russia in concert with the Wehrmacht, not the other way around as revisionists argue. President Trump recognizes that the U. S. does not need a bogeyman in Russia or China and will, at long last, bring about the peace and friendship that Ike envisioned 80 years ago.

Mary MH

It’s a nice little feature, but is it worth it? This story makes me apprehensive. Unquestionably, no good can come from it. And, at worst, it can remind Putin that there are places yet to bomb.

Si Seulement Voltaire

France

The young refugee who came to live with me at the start of the war came from this region that we visited last year. She is working to support her extended family back home. It is relatively quiet but everyone I met, a courageous & innovative people, participates in some way and many from hard hit regions or wounded have found refuge there. Electricity is limited to certain hours, often none during the day or for days (reserved for workers & businesses), in winter the cold is extreme. Sending packages to the front is widespread there and here in Switzerland where thousands of families like mine have taken in refugees.

A beautiful little old town but the town square that is filled with large posters of the fallen of all ages is heart wrenching. War is hell. A place to visit as soon as the war ends.

A slimy troll hiding in plain sight :

Elenor

This is indeed a comforting story given all the death, injury, and devastation in Ukraine. Hopefully, the war will come to an end through diplomatic efforts for a negotiated settlement, not more horrendous war. All Ukrainians deserve the daily calm life in that region offers to its residents. The majority of Ukrainians want a peaceful settlement even if it means ceding territory. The USA can make that happen by stopping the flow of arms to Ukraine.

MarkC

I volunteered in Uzhgorod with All Hands and Hearts last April helping renovate an old Soviet dormitory to house internally displaced people fleeing the war in the east. As this article notes, the town and area have been largely spared the ravages of war, but the people have not, and I witnessed several military funerals in the time I was there. The people of Uzhgorod were uniformly gracious and warm, and I look forward to returning one day.

AJB

This is a beautifully written and deeply affecting piece. Transcarpathia’s relative calm offers a rare glimpse of normalcy, a reminder of what peace looks and feels like – even as the rest of Ukraine endures unimaginable hardship.

The resilience of those who’ve fled devastation only to find refuge, and in many cases purpose, in this quieter corner is profoundly moving. It’s a testament to the human spirit: how it grieves, adapts, and rebuilds. And to Ukrainians still in battle, it’s a stark reminder of what’s at stake. Thank you for shedding light on this complex and poignant reality.